Most consumer-grade and home-office NAS units have one or two bays, while models designed for the office have four or more. That's determined by the number of drive bays it includes and to a lesser extent what kinds of drives it can carry. Since a NAS device is, at the simplest level, just a container for a hard drive or drives (with some added intelligence), the number-one spec for any NAS unit is its maximum potential storage capacity. You'll also need a more powerful NAS if you want to store big media libraries, like a collection of 100,000 stock photos for your graphic arts studio, for example. But if you're serving HD videos over your home network to two tablets, a laptop, and your smart TV, all at the same time, you'll want a NAS with higher specifications for memory, processor, and network capabilities. If you're using the NAS to back up your laptops overnight, that's pretty straightforward. Home users may not need to worry about large numbers of users these days it's the number of simultaneous devices that makes the difference. Additional layers of data security and serving files to a relatively large number of users is typically where businesses need to be careful about NAS storage. ![]() All of that is relatively simple for a NAS. Once you decide that you need to store files on a network drive, you then need to figure out what you mean to do with them, in order to determine what kind of NAS you need.įor example, a typical business scenario might be sharing access to Office files, like spreadsheets and Word documents, with your coworkers and perhaps backing up select office devices on a regular basis. You can also download Synology’s Collaboration Suite to use it as a chat server and to share office productivity software.īuying Guide: The Best NAS (Network Attached Storage) Devices for 2023 NAS Buying 101: What Can You Do With a NAS Device? With more than 100 apps available, you can use it in any number of ways, including as a media server, a cloud server, an email server, and a backup repository. Whether you’re a small-business owner looking for a RAID-protected backup solution, or a multimedia enthusiast looking to store and share your work in your own personal cloud, the DiskStation DS920+ has you covered. The only things missing here are multi-gig LAN ports, but you can achieve speeds of up to 2Gbps if you link the two 1Gbps LAN ports. Connect it to a Synology DX517 Expansion Unit, and you’ll have the potential to add up to 144TB of storage. With four tool-free drive bays, it can accommodate up to 64TB of internal storage and support multiple RAID configurations, including Synology’s Hybrid RAID (SHR). The DS920+ earns high marks for its speedy file transfer performance, easy installation, and expandability options. Read on for a breakdown of the top NAS devices we've tested, followed by a detailed buying guide that will walk you through how to find the best one for your needs. As its name implies, a NAS is high-capacity storage that connects to your home or office network so that you and other users you designate can access your files from mobile devices and PCs without plugging in to the drive. Instead, consider a good network-attached storage (NAS) device. There are ways to allow other users to share and access the files on your hard drive, but they can be challenging to set up and carry security risks. While you can certainly use an external hard drive for offloading and backing up files from your PC (and by extension, from your phone), if you disconnect the hard drive and leave it in your office, you won't be able to get to those files from another location, and neither will anyone else. ![]() In this age of high-resolution photos and near-constant video capture, the storage space in your PCs and mobile devices fills up faster than ever. Read our editorial mission (Opens in a new window) & see how we test (Opens in a new window). ![]() Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. ![]() How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac.How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files.How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill.How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad.How to Block Robotexts and Spam Messages.
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